Fat Tuesday(136)

District Attorney Littrell doesn't make a move without consulting you first. You're respected and admired." She laid her hands on his chest. "And deeply loved."

"I need you close," he whispered, drawing her against him and resting his chin on the top of her head.

"If I can forgive myself for the years I spent with Pinkie Duvall, you can forgive yourself your one mistake, can't you?"

He tipped her face up and kissed her, giving himself over to the taste and warmth and feel of her mouth until she angled her head back and murmured, "Make love to me."

He glanced over his shoulder and looked through the window toward the pier, where the others could be heard talking and laughing.

"What, now?"

"Um-huh."

Needing no more encouragement than that, he swept her along through Dredd's awkward arrangement of rooms until they were stretched out on the narrow bed where she had lain before, their clothing strewn about like hurricane-driven debris. He kissed her mouth, throat, breasts.

But when he would have entered her, she amazed him by seizing the initiative and doing something she'd never done before. At first he whispered feeble objections, but soon he was too distracted by the onslaught of sensations to protest. Groaning her name, he buried his fingers in her hair. His hands followed the motions of her head as she made love to him with her mouth.

Then she straddled him, taking all of him inside her. It was mindblowing, the way she rode him, the way her hips ground against his thighs, the way her mouth melded with his as, together, they came.

Lying quietly, lazily, sweatily, knowing they should get up and dress and rejoin the party before their absence was noticed, they remained as they were.

"You listened, didn't you?" she asked softly.

"Hmm?" he murmured, still immersed in incredible pleasure and lacking the energy to say more.

"You eavesdropped on Pinkie and me."

Suddenly wide awake and flushed with embarrassment, Burke cleared his throat."Uh, yeah. I planted a bug in the bedroom."

"Why?"

"I told myself I might learn something about Duvall's operation.

But that was an excuse. The truth is, I was obsessed with you. I hated the thought of you with him. But at the same time, it was a vicarious ..."

He sighed with self-disgust."Jesus, I must be a sick bastard."

"No, no you're not." She hugged him tighter and for a time they were quiet.

Then Burke asked how she had guessed about the bug.

She raised her head and gazed down at him, lifting damp strands of hair off his forehead."You've avoided certain intimate acts that you think would repel me. You're afraid they would remind me of Pinkie." She smiled ruefully."Burke, nothing we do together could remind me of him, or of anything I saw or overheard or experienced in Angel's house.

It's not the same. With you, everything is for the first time. It's new.

Clean. Right. I take joy from loving you. It's not the same at all."

He took her hand and pressed her palm against his mouth. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her, but, for the second time that afternoon, he was too moved to speak. > Besides, she already knew.

the end.